Spring Written In Ink Spirituality

Yuan Mei, 1716-1798, a Qing-dynasty poet and essayist, was a key advocator of the theory of the "soul and spirit". He was against the trend of imitating the old style in poetry writing. He put forward a literary concept that the poet's personal feeling and temperament, or the "soul and spirit" in his words, should be given top priority above anything else. This anti-traditional critic view was of considerable significance at that time, and a detailed study of this theory is of equal importance. It will surely add something new to the modern literary critic and offer some guidance in temporary poetic writing. This paper consists of four chapters.Chapter One is a general review of the literary research made on Yuan Mei in the past two hundred years.Chapter Two is a tentative exploration into the inner world of the poet, who resigned from his official posts and took on a life of seclusion and pleasure. Many of his poems have been described as "unusually clear and elegant language", and he took an interest in a great many things, including food and ghost stories, and he refused to hide his feelings towards young women.Chapter Three begins with a semantic analysis of the poet's wording of "xingling", or "soul and spirit" in English, and a conclusion is made that Yuan's poetic argumentation on poetry in essence was a humanist theory of poetry, which advocated personal feelings and sexual desires.Chapter Four intends to give an analysis and appraisal of the literary status of Yuan Mei in the history of poetry critic. Yuan's theory on poetry, as the writer of this paper comes to realize, contains some elements of temporary poems and entails the transition from classic poetry to modern poetry. So Yuan is justifiably considered as an important poet linking the old and the new.A chronicle of the poet's life follows, which constitutes a supplement to the paper.